Mask Your Emotions
by A Band Of Thieves
Summary: Peeta's thoughts on Katniss, and how everything they have is just pretend. Set in Catching Fire, while on the Victory Tour.


**"Long were the nights when my days once revolved around you."**

**~Taylor Swift**

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><p>No one knows what they want in this world. At least not most people. But I did. I do.<p>

There was this girl, whom I loved, since the day I saw her in school. She had no idea I existed, but her singing voice was like my drug. My father told me he had loved her mother, but she had gone and married a man from the Seam, with a voice so beautiful the birds stopped to listen. That man was her father.

Then I knew where she got her singing talent.

Everyday in school I would spend hours just sitting and watching her, from when I was five until I was sixteen. She never noticed me, not even a glance, or anything. So I continued to watch her life while to her I sat unnoticed.

One day, during school, we were instructed to leave because there had been an accident in the mines. Her father worked in the mines. I had wanted to stay at the school and help her and her sister to get to the mines safely, and to stand with her as we watched her father make his way out of the mines, but I was lead out of the school by my pushy older brothers, who were just concerned for our safety.

I knew the next day that her father had not come out of the mines when she wasn't at school, and nor was her sister.

Then I watched her get skinnier and skinnier the more time passed. Sometimes, during class, her stomach would rumble from hunger and everyone else would laugh, and her cheeks would get red, and I just wished she would look at me to see the sympathy for her on my face to know that I cared.

Once, I was watching her out the window of our bakery, sifting through trash cans to find something, anything edible. Then she came to our trashcans, and my mother ran out and yelled at her to get away, so I burnt the bread I was making, and took it out to the pig on my mother's instructions.

Then I watched as she tucked the bread under her shirt and ran home, with something to keep her from starving.

Now she would give me the occasional glance at school.

I smiled when I saw some of her weight coming back.

She had a friend. A boy, from the Seam. They were so close, everyone was sure he was her boyfriend. I hated that rumor.

Often she or the boy would come by our bakery, to trade a squirrel or something of the sort for a slice of bread, sometimes even a loaf. Whenever I would hear the little bell ring that signified someone coming into the bakery, I'd immediately check for her, and if it was, my eyes would light up and just a glimpse of that dark hair could make my day.

The reaping of the 74th Hunger Games was the worst day of my life, the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. Because I was reaped, and she had volunteered, and we were both going to be killed in The Hunger Games.

So at the interviews, I said I was in love with her, because, well, I was. So then it began this whole thing. We were the star crossed lovers from District 12.

In the Games, I joined the Careers, so I could protect her from them.

Then, when I was buried in the mud, they changed the rules, so that two people from the same District could win. And so she found me, and we lived in a cave together, and I thought she began to love me for real.

My love for her blinded me from the fact that she was just using me to get sponsors. A kiss, a hug, means food and water for us.

But then she went to the Feast to get the medicine for me, to save me, and by then I thought we were soul mates.

Those Nightlock berries are the reason I'm here today. She pulled them out, it was a double suicide, and so they told us to stop, to not kill ourselves, and we both went home alive.

But on the train, I found out that she had been pretending the whole time. This, this girl I had wasted half my life on, was just pretending to love me.

I bet she really loved Gale.

Then came the day of the Victory Tour, when we would have to put on our show, once again. I had to do it, or my family, hers, and all of those valuable to us would die.

I know what I want. I want her to love me. But she won't, never will; for her it's just an act.

So I mask the hate boiling up inside of me at her and turn it into romance, get in front of the cameras, and watch Katniss Everdeen pretend she loves me.

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><p><strong>"Don't you think I was too young to be played by your dark twisted games <strong>**when I loved ****you ****so?"**

**~Taylor Swift**

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><p>Thanks to Whisperasweknowit for beta-ing!<p> 


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